Agence France-Presse,
Washington: US and Russian officials met here Monday to discuss US plans to deploy a missile defense radar and interceptor missiles in eastern Europe along with proposals for cooperation with Moscow, Pentagon officials said.
Senior US officials hoped to get Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kyslyak's initial reaction to a comprehensive set of written US proposals on missile defense that were sent to Moscow on November 23, a Pentagon spokeswoman said.
They also were “to discuss strategic issues and how the bi-lateral missile defense issues might proceed,” said Lieutenant Colonel Karen Finn.
Kyslyak met at the State Department with John Rood, the acting undersecretary of state for arms control John Rood, and Eric Edelman, the undersecretary of defense for Policy, said Lieutenant Colonel Karen Finn.
The talks follow up on a set of wide-ranging proposals for US-Russian missile defense cooperation made last month by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates during a visit to Moscow.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman initially described Monday's talks as an experts level meeting, but Finn said it was an office call that coincided with Kyslyak's presence here for a Mideast peace conference at Annapolis, Maryland.
Finn said one objective of the meeting was to set a date for an experts level meeting to discuss the US proposals in greater detail.
A Russian foreign ministry official was quoted on Friday as saying that the United States had put concrete proposals in writing but that they fell short of what Gates and Rice promised orally when they met with President Vladimir Putin.
“Now there is no more talk of joint assessment of threats, of Russian experts' presence at missile shield's sites, no readiness to keep the system non-operational if there is no actual missile threat — everything is so washed out that it is hard to recognize the earlier proposals,” Russian news agencies quoted a Russian foreign ministry official as saying.
On Thursday, however, Putin said that he had discussed the issue recently with US President George W. Bush and “it seems that our concerns are being listened to.”
The US plan calls for installation of a powerful targeting radar in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland by 2012 to counter what Washington sees as a looming missile threat from Iran.
